According to its judicial statistics for the year 2018, the Court of Justice and the General Court completed a record number of 1769 cases in 2018 – this marked a new record in the courts’ productivity. The previous two years had seen approx. 1600 completed cases per annum. In addition, the number of pending cases also dropped to 2334 cases in 2018 compared to 2420 in 2017.

At the same time, the number of cases brought before the Court of Justice once again increased in 2018, with 849 new cases representing an increase of 15% compared to 2017. The majority of these cases were references for preliminary rulings, with 568 requests representing 70% of the cases pending before the Court of Justice. As regards the processing time for references for a preliminary ruling, statistics indicate a slight increase from 15.7 months to 16 months in 2018.